Experiment Underway To Improve Gentoo's Binary Package Handling With Portage

Gentoo developer Andreas Hüttel "Dilfridge" is experimenting with binary Gentoo package hosting and finding out what improvements to Portage are needed for making it more of a reality at a larger scale.

The Gentoo developer has been experimenting with a binary package hosting mechanism for Gentoo Linux to gauge interest level among Gentoo users and exploring what Portage changes would be necessary to ease such a workflow.

Currently this experiment is targeting AMD64 packages but not all packages are currently available -- currently it's a KDE focused collection. The binary packages being generated are targeting generic x86-64 and not optimized for newer micro-architecture feature levels.

An old Gentoo Linux install on Phoronix back from the distribution's 10th birthday.

So unlike with Gentoo Linux normally in building source packages and being able to cater to your own processor/hardware, these are generic x86-64 packages. The binary package hosting has some known limitations as well like lacking cryptographic signing.

For those interested in trying out this experimental binary package hosting for Gentoo can see this blog post for more details on how to go about trying it out or expressing your interest in the comments.